


Chinese Food and a Movie

by NotQuiteHydePark



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Puns, Christmas, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Judaism, Mathematics, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21694861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteHydePark/pseuds/NotQuiteHydePark
Summary: After the events of Uncanny X-Men 143, Kitty could really use a break. And a Jewish friend. Fortunately someone called the Baxter Building, and Ben Grimm picked up the phone.
Relationships: Kitty Pryde & Ben Grimm, Kitty Pryde/Piotr Rasputin, Ororo Munroe & Kitty Pryde
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14
Collections: November 2019 Xplain X-Men Fanfic Challenge





	Chinese Food and a Movie

**Author's Note:**

> From an idea by @Elana_Brooklyn of Graphic Policy Radio; for that and much more on this issue, check out this podcast! https://bitchesoncomics.com/episode-14-a-quintessential-jewish-experience-of-christmas/

11:03pm  
December 25 1981

Dear Diary.

Storm says she’s terribly proud of how I fought the alien last night and only damaged a couple of supporting walls. Also proud of how I didn’t die. She said I survived the experience and that’s always good. I wonder if that’s too low a bar, or if I just set my standards too high. As usual. 

Scott said of course he remembers me, even though we’ve barely met outside combat situations and he’s probably still all about grief. I would be. He’s the leader I want to grow up to be, except that he’s also totally miserable and, like, a thousand parsecs from ever having a normal life. Or a love life. I want that too. At least he didn’t ask if I liked boys or girls. I think I’m ready to say it’s both, but only to Storm. Honestly I hope she just guesses because I’m not really ready to say it to her. Piotr is fun to kiss on the cheek. I wish he would let me kiss him on the mouth but I bet he thinks I’m too young. I bet Storm would say he’s right.

Anyway, Xmas Eve happened yesterday. It was a LOT. By the end it would have been A Lot even without the alien. Mom and Dad came and went. Dad said he could only stay for one day. Professor X called him Carmen instead of Mr. Pryde, which was kind of weird for me. 

Dad’s beard looks terrific—he looks more Jewish than ever, honestly, which is a big step for him in Deerfield—but I definitely felt like Mom and Dad weren’t getting along with each other, just staying together because of me. That’s not a new feeling. It’s not a good feeling.

Dear Diary, I blew up a freakin’ alien with a jet engine and I don’t even know how to drive! I mean, I do, but no one will let me. And I wouldn’t let myself. Except in emergencies. We have a lot of those.

Anyway that was yesterday. That was Christmas Eve. Today was WAAAAY better. 

In the morning Dad and Mom and Professor X and Ororo and Kurt had brunch together before Dad had to go home. Yes, Kurt. Mom is comfortable around my new furry blue friend. Maybe more comfortable than I am! I’m glad he didn’t teleport while they were looking, though. Piotr made us these amazing dumplings. Who knew he could cook? Also there were all these presents, which was kind of a huge mess for me because the rest of the X-Men—yes I am officially in the X-Men now, who would have thought?—know that I’m Jewish and celebrate Hannukah but they don’t seem to get that Jews Don’t Do Christmas. They were good presents but still. The Star Wars comics series are really good and Kurt was so thoughtful—he just bought a whole run and wrapped them up with ribbons and then put the stack of comic books inside a fake book, the kind people use to hide treasure!

Mom and Dad gave me two cardigans and a leotard, which was a good idea since I’m still doing dance lessons and the leotard I brought to Salem Center was getting a bit small for me. Dear Diary, I’m blushing. Right-o. 

Anyway that wasn’t even the best part of today. If we were at home Mom and Dad and possibly Andrea, because she’s also Jewish and lives down the street, would definitely be going to the Lucky Restaurant and Dad would have sweet and sour chicken, like he always does, and Andrea would be pointing out that “Chinese food” is extremely American, and I would be saying I KNOW and like wolfing down dumplings and trying to stump Mom with logic problems and systems theory stuff, which she stopped getting when I was like ten but I still make them up for her because it’s a tradition. I wish I had someone I could do those problems with around here. There’s this kid Doug but we, like, just met. 

I’m sorry, Diary, I’m getting distracted. ANYWAY Dad went home this evening too and all the X-Men were super-upset because my parents were leaving me on Xmas Day but I was like AAAAAAH JEWS DO NOT. I kind of hid my sad. I think I was still mad at the other X-Men for leaving me alone last night. 

BUT THEN Ben Grimm called! Ben from the Fantastic Four! And I was all AAAAAAH you are a famous superhero and why are you calling me, I almost just got the X-Men killed! And he said “But you survived the experience.” People keep saying that around me. 

But then he said “I heard you were the new Jewish girl in the X-Men and I thought you might want someone to hang out with you today and also I really want some kung pao chicken” (which by the way is my favorite) and I said “Wait, you’re Jewish?” and he said “You better believe it! Ol’ Blue Eyes don’t lie” and I said “Uh, I think I have to get permission from an adult around here before I can go out with an adult I’ve never met” and Ben said “Good move, kid” so I talked to Professor X and he said I could go.

Ben picked me up in his quarter of the Fantasticar and he told me what it was like to go into space!!! I have dreams about going to space. Sometimes I think I’m going to find a boyfriend in space and then I think I don’t really want to date a boyfriend who would rather be in space. All I really know about my first boyfriend is that he will be named Peter. Some form of Peter. ☺ 

Ben likes math but not while he’s piloting and he likes Chinese food and telling stories about space and pilot stuff and maybe it’s because he’s been made of orange rocks for so long or maybe it’s because he’s good at concealing his saddest feelings around kids, which I know if I were a teacher I would really try to be!, but he didn’t seem sad at all about being so different from everybody else. He was more, like, I can protect the people I love sometimes. I like being strong. I could see him smile when he said that. I’ve never seen orange rocks smile before. It was awesome.

Then he asked me about Jewish books and I said Isaac Asimov was my favorite Jewish author and he said his were Grace Paley and Sholem Aleichem, and I wrote down the names and I’m going to read them later. He promises neither one writes realistically, which is good since I don’t do realistically.

Then he parked the Fantasticar on the roof of this tall building and he wanted to take me to see Raiders of the Lost Ark but I found out what it was about and I kind of noped it, because Harrison Ford is cute but I kind of want to preserve my feeling that his face belongs to Han Solo and not to a guy with a cowboy hat and a real gun. I don’t like real guns.

Then I said The Evil Dead but he said he as an adult did not want to take me to see it, which is fair, and then we tried to see this movie Excalibur which I reaaaaaaaallly wanted to see when it came out this spring but by the time I had phased both of us ten stories down through the building where he parked AND he caught a cab he could fit into (he can’t fit into most cabs) the second-run theater showing the movie was like half an hour into the film. I said it was OK I’d see Excalibur some other time and he said yes I would and I’d probably love it. I thought about swords in stones. Stone in Greek is Petros, or Peter.

Instead we saw Time Bandits. It was So Good! I want to be in a story like that. Definitely beats real-life time travel to the terrifying dystopian future. Also I want to be in Excalibur but that is obviously impossible.

Dear Diary, I am going to save my review of Time Bandits for another entry.

Instead I want to tell you about my evening with Ben Grimm, the Thing from the Fantastic Four, before my hand gets tired. I bet Stevie Hunter could teach me hand exercises to go with the arm and leg exercises but I haven’t asked yet.

I was So Hungry after that movie. So was Ben. 

Also I was wearing those red boots with the white trim that go with my red shirt AND I was carrying my backpack with all those comics AND The C Programming Language, which was fortunately waterproof because there was wet heavy snow. Snow on Ben’s rocks looks amazing. Like little waterfalls. His hand is so big when he puts it on my shoulder and he kept me from getting hit by a car on Seventh Avenue: I really felt like here was someone who got me. 

OMG FUTURE DIARY READERS NOOOOO it’s not romantic at all that would be incredibly gross. He’s an adult! Hanging out with Ben made me think about whether hanging out with Wolverine more would make him a good teacher for me. Maybe. But Wolvie’s not Jewish. Anyway.

He banged his head on the door on the way into the restaurant, which had black curtains to keep out the cold and a separate menu all in Chinese. We had kung pao chicken and dumplings and did you know he speaks a little Yiddish? He taught me how to say “linear algebra” in Yiddish and “trajectory” and “telemetry,” which I didn’t know you could do. Then he told me not to fill up because we were going to his favorite Irish bar next and I was like “You’re taking me to a bar? What?” but it turned out to be kind of great.

The owner was there and she’s called Dymphna and they opened the bar on Christmas day evening for people who just wanted to hang out or weren’t Christmas people and were friends with Dymphna and I tried soda bread for the first time and it kind of pops in your mouth and then Ben and I tried to figure out this thing about vectors and matrices and aeronautics but we couldn’t get to it before Dymphna came over herself and offered Ben this glass of sour-smelling milk and he said it was an authentic Irish thing and Dymphna said the name in Irish and then Ben said “I guess it’s clabberin’ time!” and he drank it. I had a root beer.

Then we took a cab way uptown to this place that’s a stable? with horses? and also baby goats! And Ben said “with all you been through, kid, you could use a baby goat” and the proprietor, who I think was maybe a mutant because she was glowing, looked at me and said “kid, you look like you’ve just seen a goat!” and I groaned and I wanted to solve the matrix problem or at least one of those problems because when I start a problem I don’t wan to stop till it’s solved. But I petted the goat and fed the goat kibble and Ben gave this giant rocks smile and possibly said a brcha, very quietly? The whole city behind us was so dark and quiet except for the streetlights, and there was this super-cute furry stable animal shorter than me but bigger than my old dog eating out of my hand and then there was saliva all over my hand like all over my hand.

Ben said “Huh. It’s slobberin’ time.”

Then a bunch of joggers passed us on the street and he didn’t say anything but it felt like he almost did. There was a snowflake right on his big rocky nose and it looked like a Mogen David.

I said I was ready to go because I started to wonder whether the goat would eat my fingers and then we walked outside to take a cab back to the Baxter Building so I could go home in the Fantasticar in the morning—the FF have a guest room!—but there was this guy I recognized right in the street, right next to Central Park, and he was ripping up the pavement and throwing trees in front of the cars. He was huge! He had short hair and a scowl and a kind of circus outfit.

“Fred,” Ben said. “Do you really want this today? I’m tryin’ to show this girl here a quiet day after all she been through, no thanks to you. But you ain’t been a ringleader or anythin’. I dunno how you’re out on the street, but let’s try an’ keep it that way. You walk away an’ I’m not callin’ Reed and Sue. You know you can’t fight Sue.”

I guess I’m not used to regular old supervillain fights yet. Everything I’ve seen as an X-Man has had such high stakes! But the guy just put the tree trunk down and said “I’m not payin’ for this” and walked away.

Ben shrugged those enormous rocky shoulders. “Huh. Guess it wasn’t Blobberin’ time.”

Then we got to the Baxter Building and took the secure elevator all the way to the residential FourFloor (I just made up that name) and I almost tripped over a, like, four hundred pound barbell, which I guess was Ben’s, and Reed and Sue and Franklin, who is tiny!, were there but not Johnny, and Sure (and tiny Franklin!) showed me the guest room, which had this deep-blue heavy blanket that I just love so much I want to get one for my X-room, and maybe for my room in Deerfield for when I go home?, and I took out that bundle of new Star Wars comics to read before bed.

But then Ben said “sleepy yet?” and I said “almost” and Ben said “Don't tell the Yancey Street boys, but Ol’ Blue Eyes is really into recreational math, like you, kid” and Sue said “Frank Sinatra does recreational math?” and Ben said “Me. I’m Ol’ Blue Eyes. Always been. Geez.” And Sue rolled her eyes, which are not blue, and said to me “G’night, Kitty. Merry Christmas. I’m glad you survived the experience.”

And then I rolled my eyes and went off to change into PJs, which are flannel even though the Baxter Building stays kind of warm in the winter, which is maybe from fusion experiments. Fusion energy would be great. I remember when Mom had to sit in her station wagon for like an hour to get gas. But Ben was there in his sleeping trunks, which are looser and longer than his superhero costume trunks, and he had these pencils and graph papers and a slide rule and two bowls of rice pudding with almonds, which Storm must have told him was my favorite dessert. I feel like there are adults around who care about what I want and not just about what I can do. Which is nice. 

Ben said “One more problem and then it’s bedtime, K?”

I like being called K. I said “yes.” And then he said “It’s logarithm time!”

Ben gave me a book called World of Our Fathers by Irving Howe. It is LONG. It’s kind of about my granddad. I wish everyone could get a book like that about their grandparents. I never met the rest of mine.

I hope Ben takes me out again. I liked playing with Franklin. I’m glad no one asked me to babysit him, though. With my luck there would probably be a demon attacking the Baxter Building while Reed and Sue and Ben are out.

I still want to see Excalibur. Maybe someday.

Dear Diary, good night!


End file.
